Cricket for Change

I always find it extremley strange that we pop over the Atlantic on a ten hour flight and we are in a whole new world. A world with different understanding of things, different cultures and different standards of living! We in England i feel are a nation that receive a lot but give very little back. Jamaica however as the young people have found out is totally different. They give a lot but receive very little in the way of rewards through life.

I am saying this as i am sat in the Mona University of the West Indies, Kingston where we arrived here a few hours back from Ocho Rios. This is tottaly different to Runaway Bay Hotel. The student accomdation we have been given is a little run down and abused but we as staff have had to handle and manage the expectations of the young people from coming fromn a hotel to this. The rooms are very tiny with two to a room and the windows are open allowing mozzis to get in. The young people with a learning disability have found this change a little difficult to handle as i type this. The autistic boys have struggled with change as they like set routines and really struggle with change in general. Over the period of this trip we have all learnt alot about the lives of young people with a disability and they fit into situations and how they see their lives. They feel sometimes very pushed away from things like they are not included and that’s why C4C is crucial not only to thier development of cricket but their development of life and social skills that will make them better people in the long run…

The players have all had a day off today before arriving here but last night we had an x factor style comp that Bassie somehow managed to win with his teams version of eye of the tiger which they changed to eye of the pirates! It is great seeing the boys having fun and mixing up a building team bonding skills. All greatness for them to become them better more confident young people. Today we had a session with the Mixed Physical team where they had a microphone and they were given someone in the team that they had to say something nice about… I thought this was amazing to see them all coming on stage and confidently speaking about their time getting to know that person. Their was alot of hugging and happiness in that room!

Well now we must go as tomorrow we have our first game We can not wait for the challenges that the matches will bring us but we have four matches in a row now and it will sure be tough but great. We met the PHYS team from Jamaica as they are staying in our block and i met them in November and it was great to see them again. They are for sure pumped for the series ahead!!!

Trenchtown Love

Adam Hall

C4C Development Manager

Another manic but great day is coming to a halt in Jamrock! Our day started with a light Jamaican style breakfast again to get us all ready for the long day ahead. There was no rain around at this time of the day and the heat was immense. Today has been the hottest day for the young people to deal with since we have been here. It showed with their training session the amount of sweat and sometimes tears they were producing.

Training today was going to be our last one before the first game for both teams on Sunday. The Mixed Physical team worked on their fielding again in the muggy outfield and the VI team played a pairs game on the square. Andy DW’s wife Sam has taken charge of making a film of our time in Jamaica and she interviewed Bradley Donovan today who is a young lad with cerebal palsy. Listening to what he had to say brought a lil tear to my eye. He spoke of the challenges he had being a physically disabled young person but he hoped he could show young people with a disability in Jamaica that they have the potential to achieve all they can! I thought this summed up the trip greatly. Bradley will be and is an inspiration to alot of people and the impact he will have here will be amazing!

Halfway during the training session i let Bass lead the mixed physical session with Keith and i went to play around with the local young people who were young people that lived in a shanty town nearby. They ranged from 4 years old to about 14 years old. I always find it really humbling that on overseas trips i can get down on a level with these young people who are right at the bottom end of poor and i can give them a sense of fun for a few hours while they forget of the hardships of life! I had these young people going around in Bradley’s wheelchair as they had never seen a wheelchair before and i also did a cricket session for them with Bethanie! Their natural ability to play cricket and sport in general is amazing. They are so talented and i look at this as a waste as these young people will never get an opportunity to play due to the conditions they are growing up around. If they were coached properly and this happened all over the island imagine how powerful West Indian cricket could be again…

After training we went to a 5 star resort in Ocho Rios called ‘Breezes’. We were invited here by Brian Breese from the Courtney Walsh Foundation and Mikey also joined us. They splashed around in the warm sea and had a massive but awesome buffet that was fit for kings! The one thing that we can say is that so far we have all eaten very well. Jamaicans love their food and we love their food to.

As i write this everyone is in the pool having a spalsh about (to get the sand off them) and we are going to have meeting at 7pm regards our trip ahead. This is our last night at Runaway Bay Heart Hotel, Ocho Rios before we move to Kingston for the matches but we have had some great laughs at this place! I have actually lost my voice through laughing and screaming at the mixed physical team to give them encourage but it’s all for their own good

Now to choose a captain of the day (Lil Ronnie Jackson, The boy is brilliant and would get it most days for me)

Jah rastafari

Adam Hall

C4C Development Manager

Wow, what another great day! I have just finished dancing like mad with the players on an amazing boat trip! It was great to see us all go out into the rainy Caribbean sea and all dance to a range of different tunes played by a DJ! I started a congo which i am highly proud of…

The day started with another early day and a great treat at the breakfast table of Ackee and Saltfish These are local fish and a vegetable that are traditional in Jamaiva for breakfasts. It was awesome! We then loaded on the bus and headed off to a new training ground in discovery bay. Discovery Bay is where Columbus dicovered Jamaica back in the 15th century so it is fairly a historic place! The training ground had a stunning back drop and it was huge. We worked today on our batting but before this poor Amar Khan  took a blow to the face that couldn’t be helped and he had to be carted off to the Ocho Rios health centre to be treated. He soon came back with a bandage on his chin but seeming fairly merry.

The guys all worked very hard in our mixed physical team today and they all deserved to be voted as our captain but Charlie Stack stood out today as being the one to receive the award. He has to his own amission been struggling with getting to grips with the heat in particular but today he really soldiered through and helped other guys get through and reach their limits for today!

I am as the coach of the mixed physical team but also someone who has known all the players back in the UK for a few years extremley proud of how they are socially mixing with locals, staff and peers. Their has been a good change in confidence with alot of team members and i can only hope this grows more as time goes on and this aids them to become better people back home.

After training we headed to a private beach and had a spalsh around in the sea! What a great thing it was to see all 20 odd young people having a splash about and enjoying the sea, something that doesn’t happen back in London obviously. It did however rain when we was in the sea but everyone loved it as the rain is a light relief from the humid conditions we have to receive in Jamrock. Then came the great boat trip full of dancing, non alcoholic punch and dancing staff members. We had the limbo going and the congo and all the young people had huge smiles upon their faces after this great 2 hour ride with the sunset of Jamaica to take in.

Tomorrow is our last training session before the 3 match series in Kingston. I am sure that they will all again come ready to work hard and be willing and dedicated to make sure they get each other through this session… They are all great boys!!!

It’s now 9pm local time which is 3am back home so whilst your all asleep i’m off for a break to the hotel bar!!!

Jah Live

Adam Hall

C4C Development Manager

After a real hard day yesterday at training we all awoke this morning at around 6am to a birthday!! That’s right Jonathon Gale from the MLD team is turning sweet 16 today! It’s great he can get to spend his birthday in such a great place!

After an extremley spicy breakfast with lots of usage of hot sauce from me and Danny, we all trundled into Bevan’s bus to go along to the training ground. We found out that Bevan our tour guide is a father of 7!!! with one on the way… We met a guy yesterday with 10 kids. It’s probably safe to say that Jamaican families are fairly big by the looks of it!

We arrived at the content gardens sports club, Ocho Rios for day two of the training. The VI team led by Beth once again got stuck in with some batting practice. They all looked extremly good with the bat and they all seem to be working very hard to get the most out of their cricketing expereince. Our Mixed Physical team worked very hard again! Ruzivo took one of the great catches abd celebrated in great fashion around the ground… As for our team training we got stuck into running between the wickets with full pads on and helmets! After doing this in pairs for 20 minutes each we had players dropping like flies. With respect to them it isnt each sprinting in that sun with all that gear on but in true fashion to all the great young men they are they kept going like troppers. I was massively impressed by the way they got stuck in with not much moaning. There is a truely great team feel between both team and as i said the mixed physical team at the end of sessions “We are all brothers for 10 days”. Brothers look after each other, support each other and want each other to do well  and this is exactly how the boys are behaving. We have little 11 year old Ronnie Jackson and 21 year old captain Lee Walker and all the ages between this they all have each others back! I was looking upon them chatting in the bus on the way back and thought how awesome is this! Young people with a disability who some might say have been dealt a bad hand in life living the dream in Jamaica, something most mainstream people would do.

After training we hit the Ocho Rios shopping centre. The Mixed Physical team went to ‘Juicy Patties’. Patties are huge in Jamaica and we all got stuck in with beef ones, vegetable ones and cheese ones. The young people loved it and again it’s another great thing to see them trying foods of other cultures.

After this it then lashed it down with some real heavy rain! This was great but at the time we was in the market hageling for a jamaica football for the pool. We got her down to $1000 with is about £8. It sounds expensive but the people here are a lot less well off than us so a little bit more for something less is no problem.

After being drenched we went back and had a splash around in the pool. We played chicken where we puch each other off shoulders in two on two bouts… I lost 8 times out of 8 and am hitting the gym later!!!

As for now it’s 645pm and we are about to have dinner and then celebrate Johnny ‘Chris’ Gales birthday in true Jamaican fashion!!! Good Times!

One Love

Adam Hall

C4C Development Manager

We are here!!! After all the fundraising efforts and all the hard work the young people have put in, we can now say we have ARRIVED! I am currently by the pool with Bassie, Keith and Bradders aclimatising. We are getting used to the time difference and the ways of Jamaica culture.

We arrived at Norman Manley airport very late last night and met an old friend and C4C Ledge Mikey!! We had a long wait as all the young people got used to the stickyness of the humid Jamaican air. We got on the bus to our local guide Bevan who said our trip would be no more than an hour. Three hours later we arrived at hotel at around 10pm local time which is 4pm in England so all the young people were really battered.

Bradley’s sister Bethanie saw something really harrowing, she saw a dog getting run over by a mini bus but she had the best view and she is still haunted by it by this minute!!!

Everyone was up fairly early this morning in particular Danny Baker who was buzzing around and making sure everyone was OK! At around 630am i got up to the call of the gym! When me James, Jay and Bassie arrived in there all the equipment had malfunctioned and our session stopped after 10 minutes! We then went on down to the pool had a good ol’ splash.

We are now all getting ready to go out training. We have a training session for the VI team and the mixed physical team from 10-12pm. Then today we will get over most the jet lag!!!

We will fill you in on how the training goes tomorrow…

Peace

Adam Hall

C4C Developement Manager

We are now only 3 days away from going on that amazing life changing trip to Jamaica!

I personally can’t wait for the trip. After my visit to Jamaica in November 2009 to help Courtney Walsh set up his foundation I have been looking forward to taking the London based MLD/Phys disabled young people back to play them. They were and are an extremley impressive team and the boys will have to be on form to come home from the West Indies with a result. The boys will also be playing against the Rio Cobre Young Offenders Institute which wil be a great experience for all involved.

Alex Bassan will be helping me manage and coach this team in Jamaica… His a good lad who puts the young people’s thoughts first so he will be great!!!

The VI team which is being run by Danny Baker & Beth Evans have all been working hard since this trip was set up in December. They will be playing against the Jamaican national squad who are the strongest VI team in West Indies so again they have a hard task up against them.

Danny and Beth have gone out their way to make sure the VI team received the very best preperation. Danny and Beth both have a lot of respect not just from the VI team but from everyone going because they both work extremley hard and will continue to do so in Jamrock!!

All Volunteers, Young People and C4C Staff have worked extremley hard in their spare time to raise money for this trip…

Staff Members did a 15 Mile Run, ran Quiz Nights, talent shows to co-ordinate, organised live music at the cricket centre and much, much more all in the effort to stick to our ethos, and that is to make sure that we change the lives of disadvantaged young people throughout the world. This trip will certainly do that, not just for the young people we are taking but for the young people in Jamaica that we are playing. They will get to mix with other young people from another country which to them will be amazing!

Someone who I can’t miss a mention about is our Director of Programmes Andy Dalby-Welsh… He is the Pride of Britain for a reason!!! He has worked non stop to make sure that the 26 young people going have the best trip possible to be apart of… Without him none of this is possible and everyone can’t thank Andy enough for his efforts to always get the job done! He is a true inspiration to staff and young people alike… A true legend!!!

We have lots of volunteers coming to help who will all be and have been awesome like Val, Julie, Keith, Karen, Maggie, Bethanie, Jacq, Sam and I cant think of any more but sure there are… All these volunteers are crucial to making sure that everyone has the great experience they should.

During our trip I will be reguarly adding notes to this page as a blog of our time out there so that everyone can see how we are getting on.

On behalf of Cricket for Change I would like to thank everyone who has helped out to raise money to make this trip possible! I was lucky enough to have been invovled with the Barbados VI trip 2 years ago and we saw mass change in a lot of the young people that came so the new people we are taking to this one will no doubt have the same life changing experiences as the crop before them!

All that remains for me to say is that the next time I message you I will be in sunny Kingston with 26 young people having an amazing experience!

Thank You All

Adam Hall
C4C Development Manager

On May 13th 2010 the CFC team went to New York City, USA for part 2 of the British Airways supported programme to set up a USA Blind and Visually Impaired Cricket Team. CFC have had in the past a great success rate of setting up international blind cricket teams in places such as the West Indies, Panama, parts of Africa and Sri Lanka. All these teams have really embraced Blind & Visually Impaired cricket and this is the same thing we are hoping to do with the US Blind & Visually Impaired squad.

CFC have been working very hard with Clifford Hinds (USACA NY region) to set up a very strong training programme that would leave the US in a good positon for when we departed for the UK. The first day of the programme was spent in the ‘Lavelle School for The Blind’ where members of the CFC development team (Andy Sellins, Andy Dalby-Welsh, Tony Joseph, Adam Hall & Danny Baker) were met by Principal Diane Tucker at reception. Sge was very excited at the prospect of British people coming to the school to teach a game that the nation as a whole had not a lot of knowledge around. We were greeted by great cheers from 60 young visually impaired people and around 20 staff and teachers. I started the day by doing a little a tal about who we are and what we doand what we are doing in their school. We then  went around and met all the teachers and young people and they were highly ammused by our ‘Hugh Grant’ style accents! Danny had a an interesting converstaion with one young man who was a Freddie Mercury look a like and once Danny spoke to him he even tried to speak like Freddie Mercury!!! With all this meeting and greeting said and done we got down to the basics of Vi & Bind cricket for a few hours. We all split off into groups and had around 10 young people each to tach the basics of the game to. The USACA coaches who seems intrigued by what was going on got invovled with the games also. We did games around bowling, batting, feilding and awareness of space. After this was done we said would be returning in a few days to hold some matches and more training for them. The staff at the Lavelle school then held a dinner reception for us whilst we all chatted about the benifits to everyone involved with blind cricket being played in the NY region.

I had been to New York 4 times to this trip and thought i new the place fairly well. All the previous time i had been it had been minus celsius conditions so jumpers and hoodies were packed galore! However this time NYC was in the midst of a heatwave!! Every where was so hot we were wearing sunglasses, t-shirts and shorts! It was great, i had never been to NYC like this before!!

The next day was time to get working with the coaches. We went on the subway over to Queens where a match was being played.. Danny & Tony worked hard in the morning to work with coaches and spread the word of Blind Cricket. A the same time a local T20 match was going on?!

The coaches picked up very quickly the concept of the game and were excited to go and work with some young people! On Saturday night the USACA coaches took us to ‘Hibbicus’ which was in Queens. It was an traditional Guyanese resturant in the heart of an area of Queen called Little Guyana. The food was amazing and Andy S even won a cricket bat in a  raffle! We later found out that this was were all cricketers in the NY region hung out and caught up with each other.

The weekend continued with the training of the coaches and on Sunday night the CFC team let their hair down from hard work and some went out to check out the nightlife and myself and Danny went to a  world title boxing fight at Madison Square Garden to watch Amir Khan retain his world title!!!

With the Monday now pon us we went to th Lavelle school for the blind, by this point eveyone was a little nervous as story had broke in the US about the return of the ash cloud over the UK. We were due to fly out Monday night with BA!!! With this now pushed to the back of our mind we went got on with the sessions in the great US sunshine! We got down to some really indepth work regards B & VI cricket and also in attendance for this session was John Aaron who is the Executive Secetary for the USACA. He was extremley impressed as were all the USACA coaches as to the amount of work and the level of standards for work that were invovled in this programme! All the young people had a great time . One lad named JC even said that he had never done sports outside before until CFC came to NYC. He was 16 years old!!!!

After this long session the graduation took part with Clifford Hinds and myself handed out accredited USACA certificates which was grea for all the coaches to receive.

CFC then departed for the airport and caught their plane home which was only delayed by one hour!!

CFC learnt some strong lessons from working in NYC. We have built really strong relaionship in the US with USACA. We have also linked them in with the World Blind Cricket Council and all we need to do now is watch this space to see what happens…

The CFC team had a great time in NYC working with and developing Blind and VI cricket and we want to thank British Airways as without them this would not have been possible!!!

Hello and welcome to Cricket for Change’s new blog page.

We hope lots will be happening on this site over time and that it grow’s into something that will benefit and the charity and everyone involved!

All that’s left to say is enjoy!